Author: ianpbuckingham

Consultant, cross-genre author, social activist and former SDL and Interbrand (Omnicom) director, de-fuzzing the internal comms; employee engagement; brand; organisation development and culture change fields.
Champion of people with a passion for building sustainable brands from within. Promoter of a strategy that calls for partnerships between HR; Marketing and Comms. Shared parenting advocate and sports fan.
Founder of the Bring Yourself 2 Work Fellowship and Elder Management Consultants.
Clients very varied (from Deutsche Bank to Nuffield Health) and cover most sectors.
Case-study-based books include Brand Engagement - How Employees Make or Break Brands (Palgrave/Macmillan 2007) and Brand Champions (Palgrave/Macmillan 2011). Currently writing the third in the brand trilogy (TBT), Brand Challenger.
Children's books include the Legend of the Lost series about the Savage Changeling family and their series of heroic journeys to unite the magical and human worlds and save the planet.
Blogging Columnist at CIPD/People Management. ianpbuckingham67@gmail.com.

Being connected to social media is like being plugged into the thoughts and feelings of millions of people simultaneously.

That should be and often is a very good thing, but d it can be overwhelming at times.

Unfortunately, Christmas has become a time of great pressure, both financially and emotionally with people feeling they have to go to greater and greater lengths to buy THE must have gadget or replace all the soft furnishings before the relatives arrive.

In the few short months since the first book in the Legend of the Lost trilogy has been published, listening to the feedback of readers from around the world, what has really struck me is the fact that the right books hold a special place in people’s hearts. This has nothing to do with the cost or the conspicuousness of the purchase to keep up with the peer group. It is mostly to do with the reading experience.And I am so pleased to hear tales of people reading this book together.

They are investing that most important resource that all children especially respond to, time; time invested; time out.

Nothing gives me greater delight than busy Dads telling me that they downloaded it on their device and are now reading it at bed time; grandparents who have sent copies to their beloved grandchildren far away with messages of love or Moms first taking time out to read it for themselves then repeating the process with their children having created dedicated reading time, reading purely for pleasure, together.

In a recent interview with the publishers Book Guild, I outlined that igniting imaginations was one of my aims and it delights me that this is happening.

So as you succumb to the inevitable stresses and strains of the festive period, consider this quaint tradition from Iceland and, if you’re feeling bewildered or overwhelmed, take to bed with a good book.

The first book was written, produced and distributed in and from the UK by East Midlands publishing house Book Guild, so Ian was very happy to meet with the Barrow Voice editorial team to detail the inspiration and creative process behind the series. Here’s an excerpt from the interview which you can read in full on their website:

Long car journeys with children are often experiences that parents would rather forget. But for Ian Buckingham, trips to the family home in Cornwall ignited a spark that led him to switch from writing books on brand management to a trilogy of children’s books – which he completed in Barrow.

Last year, Ian, a management consultant based in the East Midlands, was looking to take a retreat where he could write with minimal interruptions and commitments (every writer’s dream). He found an annex to let, off Cotes Road, on the banks of the River Soar. It proved to be the perfect spot to unleash creativity.

“I didn’t know Barrow, but I was working on a consultancy project nearby, ironically in the mining industry, so it worked well for me,” he says. “It was last winter and, as people will recall, we had a proper winter so I felt as though I was in the middle of nowhere, while surrounded by nature, perhaps a little too surrounded at times, given the Arctic conditions and floods.”

So, how did those conversations with little ones in the back seat of the car translate into a trilogy of novels? To keep his young daughters entertained, he would create scenes – “There’s a wolf in the forest, what happens next?” – and the family would dip into their imaginations to create exciting scenarios and characters in a type of storytelling relay.

One day, Ian and his elder daughter discussed capturing the stories they had created together. They worked through the scraps of notes they had made and sketched out the story on an A3 sheet of paper.

Years later, he took it out of a drawer and it formed the basis for his trilogy, Legend of the Lost.